I'm Back In Montreal

Well, I've been back for at least two days, so it's not really big news anyway.

Sunday, my mom, brother, Simon, and I drove our way to Montreal and stopped by my place to drop off a lot of foodstuff. Mmm, foodstuff.

We met up with Michelle and Brian and headed off to dim sum in Chinatown. It's so great when it's festival season... it was the mid-August (Harvest Moon) Festival, and there was a crapload of people bopping around. At the dim sum place, the cool dancing dragon thing came by, and my mother told us of the ritual:

The dragon goes by each place of commerce, dancing and more or less annoying/harrassing people. The storeowners, or restaurant owners, have to dangle a red envelope (with possibly more than a hundred dollars in it), tied to a bit of greens. The dragon is attracted to the green, and "eats" the thing, with the envelope, and then spits out the green only because it doesn't digest it well or something. Then it dances away to the next place of commerce.
Much like the mafia, except it's a dragon, really.

The money is meant as something of a compensation for the costumes, as apparently they make new ones every year. We spotted two dragons, in fact, one male and one female. Of course, the dancers inside the costumes are male, and so are the drummers and percussionists.